81–90 of 387 posts
This is a great piece of advice for solo devs out there:
> Great! You can pre-pay for three months of service, and your billing cycle won't start until that feature is available.
> I've never been burned on a feature request since.
I imagine it’s super easy to fall into the custom feature trap when the temptation of a big new customer is right around the corner, and this seems like an excellent solution!
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> Sorry to say but this proves that for someone who actually has to work for a living ie earn money, corporate life is absolutely the correct choice. Not really. This just proves that corporate life isn't the most profitable option for the OP. You just can't make sweeping statements like this based on a single anecdote. I'll offer this to other "corporate" folk out there. I was self-employed since late 2010 until I r…
I'll offer a counter example in that the startup I joined failed miserably and I ended up losing out on a LOT of income. I am now working for a decent 6-figure income and EXTREMELY happy with the stability and 40-50 hour work weeks...in comparison to the ABSOLUTE GRIND I went through trying to help that startup get off the ground - this is a godsend. Your scenario is VERY UNLIKELY IMO.
My first job was at a startup that crashed and burned, and what I took from that experience was that the only financially responsible way to work with startups as an engineer is to work on a lot of them to spread out the risk, or be a founder. There's just no other way unless you're comfortable with a ton of risk.
Like I said in my post above, this "success" didn't come overnight; I spent many years grinding with the business development, upping my development skills, and putting myself out there. It was not easy.
Just some honest feedback. I have a use for Zestful, and the price is good. But playing around, it seems good at the easy stuff (but I can do the easy stuff myself) it's not so good at the hard stuff. For example the string "3/4 cup risotto rice, Arborio or Carnaroli" It identifies the unit and quantity fair enough, and it's right when it says "Risotto rice" is the product. But then it says "Arborio or Carnaroli" is…
>For example the string "3/4 cup risotto rice, Arborio or Carnaroli"
>It identifies the unit and quantity fair enough, and it's right when it says "Risotto rice" is the product. But then it says "Arborio or Carnaroli" is a preparation method. I can totally see WHY it says that. But I'm not sure that's correct.
Yeah, I'm constantly improving the model, but there will always be cases it gets wrong. For most of my customers, that's a mostly fine result, because very few of the clients actually use the preparation note field. Most care only about the quantity, unit, product, and USDA fields.
I'll fix the bad result on the risotto example, but it's definitely a game of whack-a-mole. There are so many variations and corner cases that it'll never be 100%.
>At your price point though, I might still use it. Ultimatley to parse everything I need to parse it would be a lot cheaper than spending even an hour writing it myself. But that was my first thoughts playing around with it.
Haha, maybe I should raise my prices. But seriously, I'd be happy to have you as a customer. If you'd like to chat more about about your use case, shoot me an email at michael@zestfuldata.com.
I read your previous post about Zestful, and this years update, and I just don't understand who would buy this as a hosted API. To me, it sounds like this should be a library, not an API. For every use case that I can think of, having a library would be 100x better than an API. In my experience, APIs are generally slow, unreliable, and tend to change without notice. I don't understand what advantage an API has, excep…
I agree with you entirely, but how would you build a business around a library? It's one of the side effects of the (amazing) open source ecosystem we have these days that installing some kind of paid-for package isn't really that easy. Nor is preventing widespread pirating/reverse engineering of your library if it is successful. Although it's wildly inefficient, a SAAS offering solves those problems.
I don't know how profitable the business is, but if the problem is popular enough it should be possible to make money?
Also, when you are selling to businesses, piracy isn't that big of an issue.
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If you have the savings then why not? There is probably not a better time in history than to check out from being a corporate drone, assuming you have the savings. The stock index returned 30% last year...a $1M nest egg returned $300K in a year. I don't know what his savings looks like but I assume most of it is invested and wasn't included in these numbers.
He talks about that a bit - most of his money was invested in a simple S&P 500 index fund, with some dabbling in crypocurrencies (which worked out in his case.)
Sorry to say but this proves that for someone who actually has to work for a living ie earn money, corporate life is absolutely the correct choice. Even for Mr Lynch these experiments in charity wouldn’t be possible without the nest egg from google (which he acknowledged). To go from net 100k+ to below zero and still be unprofitable after two years is a financial disaster.
Bullies win!
People always say yes!
--- --- --- --- --- ---
Friends and family die in poverty!
Help someone only to get left behind!
Pursue knowledge just to study to the job interview!
--- --- --- --- --- ---
Flock to corporate HQ!
Earn $1 just to spend $2!
All from a glorified credit card!
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$10 a gallon gasoline!
$10,000 a month rent!
Bailouts! Bailouts! Bailouts!
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... ... ... all I got in return was some crummy Pepsi halftime show.
You own the problems of other people and if you don't fix it now it's only going to get worse. And you have to really fix it, not just give it lip service.
Get a security clearance, and you find out the REALLY bad stuff that goes on, like everything is a front for the police and a lot more people die horribly than you would believe. It's a fierce competition up top. The highest stakes imaginable. Death everywhere. Stay alive by any means. People you thought were friends turn brutal overnight, and I fault no one for abstaining.
Carroll Shelby died wanting to make young people enthusiastic about cars again. He turned around and asked them to give up $40,000.
He, and all of us, would have been better off sourcing parts from them. The best thing for business today is to be a job maker. Not to spike opioid sales. Not to win at zero sum politics. Not to game the courts with people made for the law.
Just bundle work, ie customers, along with the product. Don't fire anyone. Really what is it you are evangelizing? Being a dick to everyone? :(
Isn't it easier to sell "Life should be fun and people should be happy." :)
Not that difficult either. I open up VS Code, I have customers. Real earnings. How difficult is that?
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If you have the savings then why not? There is probably not a better time in history than to check out from being a corporate drone, assuming you have the savings. The stock index returned 30% last year...a $1M nest egg returned $300K in a year. I don't know what his savings looks like but I assume most of it is invested and wasn't included in these numbers.
The returns in 2019 were exceptionally good. There’s little reason to assume 2020 will be as good. With everything going on this year: Brexit, US elections, impeachment, corona virus, etc... it’s entirely possible this years returns could be negative.
My point is that when you get to the point where your savings is high enough your money works for you at a level that makes it possible to live off of alone.
If the S&P is looking flat then you could rollover some of it to a high dividend REIT that pays 10-15% too.
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It's hard starting a business and most people (90%) don't earn anymore than an employee. None the less some of us just aren't cut out for the corporate life. I'd pick poverty over the lack of autonomy, petit politics and meaningless work any day.
> lack of autonomy, petit politics and meaningless work This isn't a given. Plenty of (particularly large) companies will inflict this on you, but it's also very possible to work at a company and have autonomy and do meaningful work.